Magnus the Red

Magnus the Red is the one-eyed primarch of the Thousand Sons, also called the Crimson King and the Red Cyclops. Cast as an infant onto the psyker colony of Prospero, he was raised among its scholars, surpassed his mentor Amon, and purged the Psychneuein that had long preyed upon the world. He rebuilt Tizca and, when the Emperor of Mankind found him, took command of the XV Legion and led it through the Great Crusade as a sorcerer of unusual power.

During the Crusade he fought on Aghoru, where he sealed a warp-corrupted gate after the Battle of the Mountain and refused the temptation of the daemon Choronzon, and on Ark Reach Secundus at the Battle of Shrike, where he nearly came to blows with Leman Russ over the fate of a world’s great library until Lorgar intervened. At the Council of Nikaea the Emperor forbade Legion sorcery; Magnus accepted the edict in form and continued his experiments in secret. Foreseeing Horus’s revolt, he attempted to warn the Emperor by astral projection, breached the Imperial webway, and brought ruin upon the Emperor’s secret project. Russ was sent to Prospero; the Burning that followed destroyed Tizca’s libraries. Magnus and the surviving Thousand Sons fled to Sortiarius, the Planet of the Sorcerers, in the Eye of Terror. Shattered into shards in the fighting, he later answered Horus’s muster at Ullanor and took part in the Siege of Terra, where he infiltrated the Imperial Dungeon with Ahriman and others, was blocked by Vulkan, and, after a duel in the Impossible City of the webway, was banished when Vulkan struck off his head with Urdrakule. On Sortiarius he intervened when Ahriman cast the Rubric that reduced most of the Legion to dust within sealed armour, then banished Ahriman’s cabal.

In the 32nd millennium he led the Battle of the Fang against Fenris. In the closing years of the 41st he returned in the Siege of the Fenris System, also called the Wrath of Magnus, was banished by Logan Grimnar with the Axe of Morkai, and by the sacrifice of Midgardia transported Sortiarius into realspace above Prospero. He contested Guilliman on Luna at the end of the Terran Crusade, led Tzeentchian forces in the Invasion of the Stygius Sector, fought the Space Wolves again on Prospero in M42, and during the Psychic Awakening saw an Imperial assault under Arvann Stern and Master Lazarus foil a ritual on Sortiarius. Sortiarius remains his seat; Prospero is recorded as his former homeworld.